You can lead your customers because you are the expert

Have you heard of the Atheist Bus Campaign? It’s just been launched in the UK, although I did first read about it in Spiegel. Buses are featuring ads saying “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” And the buzz about it is all around!

I’ve just started a page on Just Giving for my VSO duty. I’m trying to raise a couple of £100 towards my costs of VSO sending me overseas to serve as a volunteer. Atheist Bus Campaign did the same. I’m looking at a Just Giving page where the target was £5 500.00 and they reached £138 200.006. That’s success.

As I’m posting this on my Marketing blog, my issue is not with the message. Although I must say it’s refreshing to have a message saying, relax about religion. So much heat is being generated at the moment by religious fanatics, it’s great to see a message that says ‘chill’.

So what is my point. It’s about the campaign and not its message. It’s one of those stories that could not be possible without the internet. It all started in June 2008 when Ariane Sherine, the brains behind this campaign, saw two red London buses dash past her with quotes from the bible.

She checked back on these quotes and the website links shown on the buses and discovered  a fair amount of religious intolerance.  The message was that unless one believed in Jesus one would go to hell.  Wow. I thought that went out with the Middle Ages. Clearly not.

She decided to start a campaign giving atheists a voice. Not necessarily denying Christians their voice. Her message was discovered by Jon Worth, a web designer in Brussels. And he lent his support as it happens on the internet where total strangers will collaborate on projects.

Nothing happens for a few months and then suddenly a wave hits. The start of this mini tsunami was the Daily Telegraph that joked about the campaign. And that got people going. The sum collected was sufficient to post the slogan on 800 buses for one month. Alone 200 of them will be driving through London. Read the Telegraphs’ latest article.

The campaign is also scheduled to run in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. One can just imagine what catholic Spain will say about that. It will be a few heated words, that’s guaranteed. The USA is working on something similar and Australia has already had some drama about a similar message. However, being Australia it was a lot cheekier. “Atheists - sleep in on Sundays”.

The entire campaign makes me think of Seth Godin and his latest book ‘Tribes’. People want to get together and share a belief, task, experience you name it. In this case it was purely a statement of tolerance that people wanted to share. A message instigated by people who are sick and tired of being brow beaten by religious fanatics of any persuasion.

Sherine and Worth are leading a small tribe. This tribe is prepared to give money just for the sake of having a short slogan pasted onto buses. Hardly a mind blowing project. But it’s caused a lot of hot air in the media and has many people venting against the slogans already, as one would expect them to do.

If you can provide a ‘campaign’ that people can buy into, a service that people can identify with you will be able to form a tribe that will follow you. Oprah certainly has managed that. Her tribe follows her TV shows, listens to her radio broadcasts and downloads her podcasts. They buy her magazine and they donate to her charities. They buy from her online shop. She has a true tribe.

You can’t do that? Of course you can. She didn’t start off with an audience of millions. She started off with one small talk show. She created a message that a tribe could identify with. It’s taken her years.  Her first show aired on January 2, 1984.  She’s changed her message a few times, but she has always been able to put her finger on the pulse of her tribe.

I’m not saying you need a multi million audience for your service. But if you approach your business as being one that speaks to a tribe, you will find it easier.  It’s about a unique selling proposition, it’s about serving your tribe - read market - it’s about listening to their message and opinions and leading them.  You are the expert!

So how do you do that if you own self-catering accommodation for instance? You offer the very best service, hold out a hand in friendship, make folk feel at home, go the extra mile when they need help and you have a tribe of people who will come back to you or at the least refer their friends to you. And the same principle applies to all businesses.

So if you want to join my tribe, all you need to do is fill in your name in the space provided to receive my newsletters or sign up to my feed. Look forward to welcoming you to the Marketing Fundi tribe.